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Ovid Database Guide: Embase

Access Embase

Coverage: 1974 to present

Embase (Excerpta Medica Database) is a biomedical and pharmacological database containing more than 30 million records including articles from more than 8,500 journals published world-wide. The database contains bibliographic records with citations, abstracts, and indexing derived from biomedical articles in peer reviewed journals, and it is especially strong in its coverage of drug and pharmaceutical research, pharmacology, and toxicology.

 

Search Tips

Basic Search Tips

  • The Textword (TW) field is an alias for all of the fields in a database that contain text words and are appropriate for a subject search. The Textword field in Embase includes Title (TI), Abstract (AB), and Drug Trade Name (TN). (Example: Ibuprofen.tw)

Advanced Searching

  • The Adjacent operator (ADJ) retrieves records with search terms next to each other in that specific order. You do not need to separate search terms manually by inserting ADJ between them because, when you separate terms with a space on the command line, Ovid automatically searches for the terms adjacent to one another. For example, the search "blood pressure" is identical to the search "blood ADJ pressure".

Limiters

  • Routes of Drug Administration are the various ways in which drugs may be administered, such as "intramuscular" or "regional perfusion". If you choose "Routes of Drug Administration", you will be presented with a comprehensive list from which to select.
  • A limit to Evidence Based Medicine will retrieve results to only Evidence Based Medicine records or subsets (e.g., meta analysis, outcomes research, etc.). (Examples: Evidence Based Medicine, Consensus Development, Meta Analysis, Outcomes Research, Systematic Review)